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Actual Play Report

So I finally got around to running a playtest session. I think things went fairly well. I had 4 other players, only one of which was familiar with the EP setting or Fate. I decided to convert the Continuity adventure to reduce how much the players needed to learn about the setting. Therefore we didn't really use the Rep or Mesh rules. There was one or two intrusion attempts, but I just handled them as simple Overcome actions. I pregenerated PCs for everyone and had everyone randomly draw Morphs at the start of the adventure.

I tried to keep house rules to a minimum. One change I did make was to use 1/2/4 stress reduction for consequences instead of the standard 2/4/6. I like the deadlier/quicker combat it produces and things did feel pretty deadly with characters having to take a consequence almost every time they were hit. I also ended up using simple weapon and armor ratings because they seemed appropriate.

I would say the session had a feel similar to the Walking Dead. The primary focus was on character conflict and drama, with the horror elements being more in the background. I had some pre-baked conflict baked into the pregenerated characters which ended up as the primary drive of the session.

I think the morph rules worked pretty well. It was very easy to start playing as soon as the players drew their morph cards and selected any stunts. I did have the PCs roll some sort of integration test which resulted in some compellable aspects that I thought added to the game. I did have issues with a few stunts.

* Reflect Boosters is a bit vague. It's unclear how often or for how long they can be used. If they can be used for an entire fight, they are probably too strong for a single stunt slot and need a drawback, limitation, or cost more refresh.

* Multiple Personalities was just too much to deal with in the middle of a session so we ignored it.

I felt that the rules for nanofabrication were a bit lacking since the primary method of acquiring gear in the scenario was through fabrication. Time was also a limiting factor in the scenario. It seemed natural to allow a programming roll to reduce nanofabrication time. It would be nice to have a list of fab base time/difficulty for some basic gear so I wouldn't have to reference the Core rulebook.

I felt the need to distinguish gear through mechanics a bit more in the scenario. Because they were dealing with a lack of equipment and only had a limited time to fabricate equipment, I felt it was necessary to distinguish between quality of equipment through weapon/armor levels. Using Stunts for better gear didn't quite work because there was a lot of fighting over who should have it and passing it around through the scenario.

The Async powers worked fine, but we didn't get delve into them much.

I did feel the lack of a general knowledge or deduction skill. I ended up relying on investigate which worked okay I guess. I feel X-risks and Xeno-Contact might overlap too much. I feel like most applications of Xeno-Contact could be handled by X-risks except specialty sessions that deal with lots of benign alien artifacts.

We got all the way through the scenario in about 5 hours, but we had to rush a bit in the end. We ended where the lone Undercover Firewall agent, who had been fighting to gain trust of the other PCs the whole session, ended up shooting 2 other PCs dead and then herself because they were infected (an awesome compel), leaving the Async she was trying to recruit to carry their stacks in the escape pod with instructions on how to contact firewall and remote detonating the Kelper and Istari.

The Players seemed to handle the rules pretty well, even though I didn't bother explaining them that much. They were quickly compelling and creating advantages without even knowing those were things they could do. The most common feedback was that the setting itself was difficult to grasp, but their character aspects helped them figure out what to do.